Windchill
by Proud Olympian
Summary: It's cold outside, New York can't sleep, and Massachusetts can't stop shaking.


Massachusetts hated blizzards.

He laughed at his southern siblings when they pulled out their winter coats at 50°F (not Celsius, never Celsius), but that was a matter of principle and nothing else. He laughed on the numerous occasions Pa declared a boycott against winter and hid himself under a pile of hot water bottles and blankets. He deliberately walked out to get the newspaper after ten inches of snow had fallen while only wearing his boxers because he and New York were in a contest over who was more resistant (they both wound up with colds and Alaska had laughed hysterically at their plight).

But dear _God_, did Massachusetts hate the winter and everything that came with it.

His earliest memories were of the merger between Plymouth and the Bay, way back before plumbing and heating and all those other nice things that made his life a little easier. The merger was about when he popped up, he was pretty sure. And after that he remembered walking barefoot through the snow (and the slush, and the mud, and the grass, and the leaves, and the snow again). He remembered walking barefoot until someone found him, and then he was _warm_, and it was that warmth and idea of comfort that Massachusetts counted as the best feeling in his whole life.

The nights were always long and cold and dark. The days were bright but not warm at all. When the land froze, it was like he could never get warm again. He _hated _winter, but worse than winter were its blizzards. The wind, the cold, the biting snow that rose up in drifts and seeped through the walls and the floor and the roof...

How did Alaska manage?

Winter in Vermont. There was two feet of snow on the ground and the house was bright with Christmas lights. Miles to the south, a nor'easter was slamming into Cape Cod.

New York shuffled around the house, Santa hat on his head and fuzzy dark blue pajamas and a pair of rabbit slippers. The lights hung in the windows cast a faint warm glow over the house, bright enough to see by and that he didn't need to turn lights on but dim enough that he kept walking into things through his sleepy haze.

"'s beginning to look a lot like Christmas," he sang, rather off-key, flopping onto the couch and pulling his phone out of his pocket. "Laaaala-la da-da..." The phone buzzed in his hand. "News!"

Whenever he got hit with yet another bout of insomnia, he set his phone and laptop to alert him to any breaking news. It kept him from dying of boredom during his inability to sleep. Currently, the screen on his phone said that Boston was without power and the subways might be flooding if the weather kept up.

New York looked up at the ceiling. The Vermont house was toasty warm.

"Oh, the things that I do..." he grumbled after a very long pause, rolling off the couch and walking in the vague direction of the stairs, tripping over one of the tables which held a lamp on the way. He caught the light before it could crash on the floor.

Massachusetts' room was pitch black (normal), and the bed looked less like someone was sleeping there and more like a mountain of blankets (less normal).

"Hey, Missie."

The reply was a faint sound like an upset cat (really not normal).

New York turned straight around and went to the kitchen, passing over the tea (it would get thrown at his face) and threw a pot on the stove to make hot chocolate. When he got back upstairs twenty minutes later and repeated his earlier statement, he got exactly the same reply.

"Come on, Missie, there's a fireplace downstairs," he said, picking up both his brother and a mass of blankets and carrying them both downstairs despite Massachusetts' protests. "Multiple fireplaces, in fact. And hot chocolate."

"Hate you."

"No, you don't."

* * *

><p>The great thing about the Vermont house (there were a lot of things, really, but Steven was only thinking of one at the moment) was that it was possible to see the eras through which the building had lived. The original house had been two stories high with a big round table for meals and gas lights and candlesticks and fireplaces. There had been maybe twenty of them, the house built in the years preceding the Civil War.<p>

The third floor had been added during the twenties, giddy on the high of the people's excitement and the economic boom and the sheer relief that that awful war was over. They drank and laughed and partied, and the family got bigger, and somewhere in a drawer someplace in the house there were pictures of the girls all in flapper dresses.

Less than a decade later, the house had drained out like a sink as the plug was pulled on the economy and the stock market crashed. The Great Depression stormed through, a twelve-year-old Washington state living in Seattle's Hooverville, too poor to buy a train ticket back home; New York working almost twenty-four hours a day to send cash back to the house (if he wasn't going to sleep he would make the best of it); Massachusetts paddling a rowboat around Boston Harbor; less than a dozen states actually remaining in Vermont with their father as he struggled to stay on his feet.

The basement had been extended and renovated and a bomb shelter had been added during the Second World War, and the States had taken matters into their own hands during America's thirty-year paranoia stint and expanded the house to a fourth floor and another addition onto the side. There was electric heating and electric lighting, and they went from radios to black-and-white television to television in color. The floorboards in the main hallway were easily a foot wide and warped with age; there was tile in the kitchen; last year, the family bought carpet to put in the living room.

Still, even after all of that, they had kept their fireplaces and used them regularly, and New York tossed his brother onto a couch before tossing some logs into the fireplace in the living room before getting tinder and striking a match. The room was instantly bathed in a warm orange light, though Massachusetts still shivered.

"S'cold," he mumbled from somewhere under his blanket.

"You mentioned," New York replied dryly.

"Don't care."

New York went and poured two mugs of hot chocolate, eying his brother's favorite Celtics mug with distaste but not saying anything, then brought them back. "Try not to spill it."

"Nn."

Slowly, the Bay State unearthed himself from his blanket mound enough to sit up and take the drink, only his head and hands showing. New York went over and flopped into his armchair with a sigh. The logs crackled in the hearth, and it was warm and peaceful. God, he wanted to fall asleep...

"More?"

He opened his eyes. Massachusetts was looking right at him, holding out the now-empty mug.

"...Please?"

"God_damn_, Missie, don't look at me like that! Snark at me or something. You look like a kicked puppy. Just stay put, I'll get more cocoa..."

* * *

><p>Massachusetts hated blizzards. He had been caught outside in the winter far too many times for him to really enjoy the season anymore, having developed an abhorrence toward the cold, wet snow and the wind and the frigid temperatures.<p>

Home, however, was warm and safe and something constant, and it was at home on the couch that he finally managed to fall asleep, not feeling quite as cold as he had before.

New York put the half-emptied mug on the table before his brother could spill it, grabbed and extra blanket, and curled himself into a ball in the chair. "'Night, Missie."

* * *

><p><strong>In honor of that really awful cold snap we had last week. -25°F with windchill (warning that frostbite could occur if a person was outside for more than half an hour) and my school didn't even send out a delay. There were middle school kids standing at the bus stop in the morning.<strong>

**Historical Notes: There were two colonies which eventually became Massachusetts: Plymouth Colony (y'know, Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, the "first Thanksgiving" that gets overidealized, etc) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The two colonies eventually merged to become the Province of Massachusetts Bay when an English dude came over with a charter in 1692. I'm estimating that's about the time when the personification of the colony came into existence.**

**New York lives up to his city's nickname (the city that never sleeps). I hope I'll be able to go into more detail about family dynamics at a later time, but for simplicity's sake let's just say that America + the States decided they hadn't seen too much of one another in the past sixty years since the Declaration was signed and decided to build a house (thinking sometime in the 1840s).**

**As always, I hope you enjoyed!**


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